Bureaucracy falls short in time of crisis

Sitting at my desk with Wolf Blitzer's information-overload "Situation Room" blaring in the background and looking at commercially available before-and-after satellite photos of the Big Easy, I'm desperately trying to figure out why a benevolent god would allow a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina to happen.

More distressing is the fact that the U.S. government categorically failed the citizens of the Gulf Coast. Five days after the storm hit, major media outlets reported that anarchy had broken out among survivors in New Orleans. Looters were running off with urgent necessities like water, sneakers and flat-screen TVs, while the New Orleans Convention Center had become the scene of murders, rapes and riots. This isn't an underdeveloped area with little commercial access; it is one of the biggest cities in North America. It is an embarrassment that food, water and badly needed medical supplies took so long to reach the desperate citizens of one of the most advanced nations on the planet.

What happened? No one can know for sure, but along the way, key proactive decisions were not made to allow recovery to begin in earnest. This storm surprised no one — FEMA should have been called to high alert as Katrina ravished the coast. With FEMA's help, a clear chain of command should have been established while the winds were still blowing. Even if the levees had not broken, New Orleans would look like Biloxi, Miss., an area still in desperate need of rescue and rebuilding assistance. Once the levees started to give, the end result should have shocked no one with any in-depth knowledge of earth science or Mardi Gras. As such, with presidential help if necessary, the national guards of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and even New Mexico and Georgia should have been partially mobilized to provide security and humanitarian assistance for what we all knew was inevitable.

Given what we know now, there is little evidence that President Bush was personally at fault for the catastrophe that was the first five days. He was right to return to Washington immediately, and his request for emergency funding from Congress was a step in the right direction, as was his decision to remove Michael Brown from his post. And yet, 24 hours after the storm hit, politics returned to the arena. Jesse Jackson and company decided that disaster response was slow because a high percentage of the victims were black and that the President personally decided to withhold support. General Clark and former Senator John Edwards decided to reopen campaign season (ignoring the fact that they lost the first time) and promptly began complaining from the sidelines without offering constructive recommendations.

On the other side, the President wasn't exactly inspirational when offered an American people looking for hope platitudes that they already knew, saying that "this recovery will take a long time." Gee, thanks Mr. President — that's exactly what I needed to hear after watching CNN for three days straight. Telling Michael Brown that was doing "a heck of a job" days before firing him didn't exactly build confidence in the administration either. Indeed, there was a leadership vacuum, but there is little evidence that Wes, either John, or Bill would have done much better. And yet, as if on cue, the Republican smear machine kicked into high gear. One notable entrant, Republican Congressional candidate Bill Spadea, managed to wait until day five of the media circus to praise the Republican Governor of Mississippi, while blaming the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and Democratic Governor of Louisiana for "dereliction of duty". Does he really think that New Jersey voters won't see past his political hackery? Shame.

What we witnessed wasn't racism or dereliction of duty but the colossal failure of bureaucracy. Neither skin color nor socioeconomic status had anything to do with the fact that the bureaucrats just retreated to standard operating procedure (ignoring the fact that the reality on the ground was anything but standard), going so far as to prevent private citizens from helping out. Surprised? Don't be—that's what bureaucrats do. And yet it gets even scarier. If you think this was disgraceful, just remember that we as a nation have been dealing with hurricanes for the last 200+ years. Convinced that the government will be able to handle a nuclear attack on one of its biggest cities? Think again. Matthew Gold is a politics major from New York, N.Y. He can be reached at mggold@princeton.edu.